Monday, August 28, 2017

Lo and Behold (2016)

IMDB
Lo and Behold (2016): History & future of the Internet. Some topics are promising (AI), some scary (solar flares), some badly misjudged. C+











Saturday, August 26, 2017

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016)

IMDB
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016): War in Iraq. Pro football in Dallas. A study of PTSD. Flat acting. Clichéd characters. Watchable. C+

As is usually the case, the movie is not as good as the book, which was reviewed here in 2013.








Friday, August 25, 2017

Magnet Schools vs Neighborhood Schools

Five years ago, I blogged about magnet schools — their purpose and their effect. I think it holds up well, in that I had questions about the purpose and effect of magnet schools in Richardson that I couldn't answer then and I still can't answer today. I don't believe there has been adequate public discussion. It's time.

Thursday, August 24, 2017

POTD: D'Amico

From 2017 01 29 Caribbean Cruise

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Galveston Bay, the entrance to the busy Houston Ship Channel, ranked first in the United States in foreign waterborne tonnage; first in U.S. imports; and first in U.S. export tonnage.

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Local, State, Nation: Same Story

Recently, I posted a graph showing Richardson ISD schools' academic ranking plotted against the percentage of students they have on the free and reduced lunch program. As I expected it showed a correlation — as socio-economic status drops, so too does academic ranking.
From SchoolDigger.com
Today I want to look at state and national data.